Deception
by oohfriedrice
Summary: The Mellarks' are killed in the presence of their adopted niece. She vows revenge, but with her large, poor family how will she not only survive the games but avenge their death? R& R
1. Chapter 1

I'm too tired for this, too sick. We are all being used by the Capital. We cannot help it, but we must live on, even after their dreaded, deadly games. The second rebellion succeeded for, oh, forty or so years. The Perps, also formerly known as Coin and Snow, were killed, but sadly while our "saviors" were recuperating from their horrible ordeal in their meager district twelve home, some enraged capital citizen slit their throats.

They did not try to fight since after all, they were over sixty years old and sleeping. So alone they were when they died. They were asleep in the light of the pale, afternoon sun. Taking a cat nap as older people are so prone to do, when a bush moved, signaling the onslaught.

The plan was methodically thought through. While the couple took their daily mid afternoon naps at one thirty, guerilla warriors would jump out of the underbrush. Shooting blow darts filled with anesthetic, they made sure that Mister and Misses Mellark were really asleep. Then, the big, head honcho would throw knives into their sleep-ridden bodies. The murderers then spread the Mellarks' blood on the walls of their once happy house, writing the words "_Even the strongest are weak" _in that horrible, red liquid. They did not notice however, that the Mellark's adopted niece was watching them, and she, I, vowed revenge.

I was nine at the time, and I still remember it as vividly as ever. I wanted to see my aunt since she had been teaching me how to hunt. Oh well, she started when I was six, so I had had enough tutelage.

The government went down the drain about two years later. There is a new President now, a woman this time who is known as President Mintz, and that makes it even worse. The first thing she did was reinstate the Hunger Games. They have been brutal. Every time she has PMS she comes up with a new arena and ways to kill off the tributes one by one.

My father moved our family to district five before the government went bad. He knew what they were going to do to twelve. He was right. It was bombed beyond recognition and with all the coal dust in the air, fire still rages on.

The reapings are even worse now. Instead of being entered once per year, you are entered once your first year twice your second and so on and so forth. This is if and only if you are poor. The rich just sit and laugh. Mintz rigs the government, meaning the rich only get richer and the poor poorer. There is no middle class only millionaires and people who are starving. Guess which I am.

The government is so nice! When you reach twelve you can be entered more into the reaping if you sign for a Tesserae. For two entries per person in your family, you can have all the food you can eat. Not. More like bread and water and canned chicken. With my large family of my diseased parents who were bitten by mutts, grand-parents, and three siblings, I had fifteen entries my first year. Of course, I hunt for myself, but for seven other people that's too much. Now at seventeen, I have over 100 entries, the most in the district of 4000 entries. The reapings are tomorrow, but don't worry, the odds have never been in my favor.


	2. Reaping Day

**Sadly, I do not own the hunger games. I wish, but too bad for me. By the way, writing in lisp is hard.**

I awoke in the middle of the night or the beginning of the morning, depending on what you would call it. Either way, I was sitting awake at two -thirty waiting for it to become light enough to read. It wasn't nerves. I had out-grown those a while ago because I knew that one of these days I was going to be reaped. It was a known fact. I would be sent to my death.

It is not like I want to die. On the contrary, I would want to stay alive if only to nurture and protect my three younger brothers. Sadly, with my numerous entries in the reapings, it is almost certain that I will be fighting in the arena. We all have to die sometime, but being murdered, that is not preferable. And if I do get killed, those bastards who killed my family will not go avenged.

Finally, it became light. Stretching my body, I rose out of bed. Immediately, goose pimples peaked on my pale skin. I dress quickly in my clothes, hand me downs from my deceased aunt when she was my age. Unlike her, I don't hunt with a bow and arrow. It reminds me too much of her. I took up throwing knives. Which though may waste valuable meat, kill quickly. After three hours of hunting, I make my way down to the lake. On a normal day, the lake is cool, its average temperature in the mid fifties. Today, however, it is frozen. This is a problem.

I gain my biggest haul at the lake since the fish and innumerable birds are so easy to hunt that they are dead before they know it. This has happened before though, and I have gotten used to it. All people in District Five live by the motto "_There are two seasons in District Five, winter and the summer solstice." _What helps is for some unknown reason, the geese always reside here in the winter. They always land on the ice and slip their way across, allowing me to kill them with ease. Let's just say that I am very good at walking on thin ice.

I manage to kill one mother goose and one gosling. Why let the offspring die a slow, painful death when I can prevent its suffering by killing it? That is what the Hunger Games are, a slow, painful death. Sadly, the people of the Capital won't just kill off 24 kids from the Districts, they have to play with their food. Tired of hunting, I lie on the grass by the lake. The sun is high overhead, and in the light of the early afternoon sun, I fall asleep.

Happily, I make up what sleep I had missed during the night. I sleep fitfully though my dreams are plagued with nightmares of my Aunt and Uncle being murdered and worse yet, my three brothers. They are so innocent that I almost cry each year when the Hunger Games are aired. I wake up refreshed though, expecting to see the sun in my eyes, but something was off. The sun was off on my right probably about thirty degrees to the right of its original position. I had slept more than three hours, and would miss the reapings!

Isn't it good to miss the reapings, you may ask? Well, if you are not at the reapings, not deathly ill, or the peacekeepers haven't got word that you have died within the last two days, then your whole family will be killed. A happy, happy thought, right?

I throw my game bag over my shoulder and haul ass home. My grandfather greets me at the door turning his back as I throw on the first clothes I see. He shrugs as he says with a smile, "Three minutes to spare. That has got to be a record." Each year it seems as if I cut it closer and closer to being late to the reapings. That way I don't have the time to look good. At least, I can mock the Capital with my nutty outfits. My grandfather is the only person who seems to actually understand this about me. Unlike my uptight grandmother, he understands my hate for the Capital - something about his daughter, Froxen, being killed in the first set games. Sadly, he has gotten older and can't go hunting with me anymore. I leave for the town square dressed in an orange sweater which clashes horribly with a brown skirt and a bright blue hat.

As usual, I am the last person who arrives at my designated section. Before this with my "costumes", I was often frowned upon or even smirked at, but within the last two years, everyone has realized that they are the norm. Our escort, Thanatos Yukilev, reads to us the oh so important information about these fun, fun games. With my best friend, Jason, I make fun of our flamboyant escort's lisp. Jason is the most sought after boy in the district with his green eyes and red hair, and with me hanging out with him all the time, I am the girl everyone loves to hate. "Thah capital thaved uth from thah warth and ditheatheth. It ith tho good it only killth off twenty-four kidth each year. It ith thah motht greatheth thing that ever happened, and if you deny it, it will kill off your whole famiwy," we mock as Thanatos speaks in his different dialect of English. That's basically what that whole speech is about. It just has bigger words.

"Wadies firth," moans Thanatos as he stuffs his hand into a big pink ball. He pulls out a single white slip. "Minerva Amoth," he called. It wasn't me? It wasn't me! I did not get reaped. I could raise my brothers for another year. I can stay at home and hunt.

I look up to the stage to see who the unlucky girl is, but no one is up there. I then see a short, babushka looking woman run up on stage and yell, "Minny is sick with terminal Hypochrondria, so she cannot go to the Capital because she could infect everyone." The one good thing about the reapings is if you are sick and reaped, you don't go to the Capital because you could infect everyone, but Hypochrondria? Really? There is no doubt that that girl has "Hypochondria". Oh, we all think we have diseases. Think, being the operative word there. Oh, poor Minny. Too bad no medicine can cure her of this deadly disease.

Thanatos discusses with the babushka heatedly for a while and then begrudgingly returns to the podium. "Ath it turnth out, Minnerva Amoth is altho thick with Pneumonia, Ebola, Cholera, Cancer, Autithm, and Diarrhea. She will not be ewigible to partithipate in the Hunger Gameth. We will have another reaping," Thanatos announces as he inserts his chubby hand into to the sphere of death notes.

"Juliette Conthtant," he shouts. I guess you cannot be lucky twice. I hope my grandmother and grandfather live long enough, so that Matt, the oldest of my brothers, is sixteen or older. My parents are of no use at all as they have become senile after being bitten by mutts. I hear my youngest brother start to cry as I make my way up to the start of my torture.


	3. Thanatos the Death Bringer

**Sorry for not updating. My next chapter should be out in two weeks ish.**

I wish, I wish.

I could go away.

Running on towards yesterday.

I know what tomorrow brings

I know I am scared.

For those horrible things

I am not prepared

The sadness the sorrow

I will feel tomorrow

Will kill me and not make me smarter.

My coffin is ready

A box of Mahogany

I may as well die, a martyr

I wish, I wish.

I could go away.

Running on towards yesterday.

I know what tomorrow brings

I know I am scared.

For those horrible things

I am not prepared

Leaving this world, this place that I love

Would only at risk the people I love

The curtain is dropped,

There is blood on my hands

My dying wish is to be with my friends

I understand what this means now. I am going to die guilty, and my family will see me as a monster. This is the beginning of the end of my torturous death. For all my life that was hanging innocently on my mantle piece written by my dead aunt, Froxen, who died in the first games. They got it back with her body since it was in her pocket, and apparently she was writing it right before she died. I will join her as a friend.

I am awakened from my thoughts after Thanatos calls the boy tribute. Though he makes his way up from the fourteens division, his filled out body and minor stubble makes it appear as if he is eighteen. I cover my ears at his name. Names hold too much meaning, and by knowing someone's name, you are on a more personal level with them. If I knew his name and he was killed before me, I would never forgive myself. I will call him boy.

Thanatos forces us to shake hands, and while we do I size him up. Boy is better off than half the district. He must be from one of the old families. They are always the richest. His black hair is that of most of the district, but his eyes are different. They are not the green that most of the district displays, he must have some sort of a recessive trait. They are black and cold, with a steely gaze of a shark, hungering but never full. He is one to hunt down his pray. I take one last look at the crowd as I am whisked away to the Justice building.

I have never been inside the Justice building. Usually, the only people who go in come out in a coffin. Despite its lack of use, it is engulfed in swathes of velvet and silk draperies with a ceiling full of lattice work. I am thrust into a room that most probably is more expensive than my entire house. The plush, velvet couch I sit on appears comfy, but is as hard as rock. My family comes bursting in the door as I sit down, and my mother hysterically yells, "Oh Juliet, why?"

I nod uncomfortably at the peacekeepers and say sharply, "I knew it was coming."

"But you only had 21 entries," she replies.

"No mother I have over one Hundred entries, 105 to be precise, and I did not tell you because you would not have let me take out a Tesserae, and then we would all be dead. I may die, but if I hear that the boys are going hungry, I will haunt you until hell turns cold. "

With equal verve, my mother runs out of the room screaming. The pills she received from the capitol to quell her insanity obviously did not work.

I feel my youngest brother Jaden squirm on to his favorite spot on my lap, "Lili, you are so lucky you get to play in a funner game. They sound so fun that I wanna play," he says.

"No you don't. No you don't. Jae, when I get back I will be asleep for a long time, but I will always be in your heart thinking of you." God that, sounded cheesy, but I don't want to tell him that I will never come back.

"Lili, whats hell?" Oh, I guess my brothers were in the room when mother had her episode.

"It's where bad people go, Jae."

"Is it hot?"

"Now where ever did you get that idea?"

"Well you said you would haunt mommy 'til hell freezes over and that seems like a long time since you said it angrily but I don't know I could be guessing I think it is hot maybe it's not wait Grandma what are you doing?" says Jaden as my grandmother leads him and my other brothers away in the middle of his tangential discussion with himself, me alone with my grandfather.

"So Jules it is time to play."

"Sadly."

"Remember us when you're alone, and no matter what you do, you will always be a good person to me."

"I will."

"Take this as a token. It was your aunts. You guys are so much alike." He hands me a necklace with the charm of a bear. The bear contains an emerald liquid, the symbol of the Mutations branch of our district.

"She was in the mutations branch before she went into the games, huh? I guess her games were before you guys moved to twelve. She was in mutations, just like me. But why did you guys move to twelve anyway? You always told me it was because we had family there." I respond

"We never did. We couldn't stand to staying in five, everything reminded us of her. We would turn the corner and remember that was the place Froxen liked watching the stars or that was the place where Froxen hurt her knee when she was five. It was too much to bear, and since inter-district travel was allowed after the revolution, we moved. She was in the same games as Katniss you know, made it to the final eight, I almost had hope. We moved because we thought Katniss would empathize with us, which she did. We created our own family. I did not get her out alive, but I will get you out. I will do whatever it takes, I have a plan."

And he does, and he tells me.


End file.
